After a month of protests, Bangladesh’s longest-serving prime minister who is also the longest-serving female head of state in the world, Sheikh Hasina, has resigned and fled the country amid chants of “fake, fake” and calls for a more representative democracy.
The end of her five-term, 15-year rule came on Monday amid her government’s violent crackdown on weeks of demonstrations against an employment quota law that dates back to the nation’s founding.
The government’s response to the demonstrations, which began at Dhaka University, was swift and brutal. More than 300 people – demonstrators, children, journalists, police, and bystanders – have been killed since they erupted on 15 July.
The day before her resignation, 4 August, was the bloodiest, with reports of at least 85 people killed. Rights groups estimate that 10,000 people have also been arrested and 61,000 others implicated in legal cases by the government since the protests began.
Despite the state’s increasingly violent use of force, including a shoot on sight order for security forces, thousands of people continued to risk coming under fire from rubber bullets, pellet guns, tear gas, sound grenades, and live rounds right up until the very end.
They initially took to the streets to protest a law that ensured 30% of all government jobs would go to the families of veterans of the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan, but footage of the killing of a student protester by police led to an escalation as people flooded the streets and social media to call on the prime minister to step down.
The violent crackdown, which includes “unlawful killings” by security forces, was seen as the final blow for the decades-long rule of Hasina, whose government and security forces had already faced longstanding accusations of election fraud, police brutality, torture, and abuse of Rohingya Muslim refugees.
Within hours of Hasina’s resignation – announced by the nation’s army chief – hundreds of people stormed Gonobhaban, her official residence, which they had been marching towards earlier in the day, chanting “bhua, bhua”, (“fake, fake”).
‘The dictator is out now’
For Bangladeshis, the fall of a woman dubbed Asia’s longest-serving autocrat was a moment long in the making. Though the majority of her rule took place in the twenty-first century, Hasina’s first term in power was in the mid-1990s.
“Hasina’s goons made Bangladesh hell,” Shamima, a 36-year-old protester, told The New Humanitarian. “The dictator is out now… I want a safe Bangladesh for my children, a proper culture of justice,” she added, clutching the hand of her eight-year-old daughter.
Abdur Rahman, 24, was at Dhaka University when he heard Hasina had resigned and fled. “It’s sad,” he said. “She has to face custody. She is a killer.”
His wishes for the future? He said he wants a “humane” country with a true sense of democracy: “We don’t want any more bloodshed. We don’t want any future generations to have to come to the streets and chant slogans.”
“The ongoing violence has heavily impacted the International Rescue Committe’s ability to deliver essential humanitarian services as well as the security of our staff and clients. We urge the authorities to restore peace and ensure the protection of at risk groups, including refugee communities.”
Even prior to the protests, Bangladesh had been facing a number of humanitarian and rights challenges. The UN and rights agencies have long accused the Bangladeshi authorities of mass arrests, torture, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances. Last year, security forces stood accused of not doing enough to protect one million Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar in overcrowded camps in Cox’s Bazar from increasing violence perpetrated by local gangs and armed groups.
In a statement published the day after Hasina fled, the International Rescue Committee said the four weeks of unrest and communications cutoffs had forced it to suspend all its operations apart from one 24/7 health clinic in Cox’s Bazar.
“The ongoing violence has heavily impacted the IRC’s ability to deliver essential humanitarian services as well as the security of our staff and clients,” said IRC country director Hasina Rahman. “We urge the authorities to restore peace and ensure the protection of at risk groups, including refugee communities.”
It is not clear what will happen next, but protest leaders have already called for the complete abolition of the “fascist systems forever”. Parliament has been dissolved and protest leaders have reportedly met with army officials and said they won’t accept a military-led government.
In the hours after Hasina fled, social media was filled with footage of statues of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, being toppled. There were also some clear political demands, including that Muhammad Yunus, the country’s lone Nobel laureate, be installed as chief advisor to the interim government.
A tumultuous end
Anger built steadily after a June court ruling reinstated the quota law, which had been scrapped in 2018. Critics say it overwhelmingly benefitted the party of Hasina, whose father, the nation’s first prime minister, played a central role in the independence war.
In a bid to quash the simmering protests, the Supreme Court lowered the quota on 22 July from 30% to 5%, but activists speaking to The New Humanitarian vowed to continue their fight against what they saw as a “fascist” and “autocratic” government.
Last week, Students Against Discrimination, one of the main organising groups, called for a civil disobedience movement, urging people to stop paying their taxes and utility bills, and to shut down factory work and public transit systems.
“As a politician, [Hasina] lost everything as a leader; she is now a dictator,” a human rights defender, who did not wish to be identified, told The New Humanitarian on 3 August, as activists were reporting mounting deaths among protesters.
As with recent protests against the Finance Bill in Kenya, the demonstrations in Bangladesh have as much to do with economics as they do with anger at government cronyism. As of 2022, 41% of Bangladeshi youth were neither studying nor working.
Ahmed Thakur, a 23-year-old public university graduate, technically benefits from the quota system due to his father, but he still took to the streets of the capital on 19 July to protest discrimination, saying: “Bengalis have always stood against injustice.”
Given the economic uncertainty in the country, Thakur said the job market had become increasingly insecure, and government jobs – which the quota system guards – had become even more coveted.
“The disparity and injustice in the current system disadvantage many talented and qualified individuals,” he said. “Many graduates, including myself, would face similar challenges without quota provisions. This reform movement is a justifiable effort to address these issues.”
In 2022, a quarter of the nation’s population – or 45.9 million people – were between the ages of 15 and 29. That same year, the nation’s Statistics Bureau found that 800,000 college graduates were unemployed, 19% of them women.
‘They started firing bullets, round after round’
Just like thousands of other Bangladeshis, taking part in the movement cost Thakur dearly, and led him to witness scenes he couldn’t imagine.
“The police suddenly started firing tear gas and sound grenades along with rubber bullets at us. We scattered to save our lives,” he said. “Even after dispersal, the police came at us more aggressively. They started firing bullets, round after round.”
Thakur’s account of police using teargas shells, sound grenades, and rifle fire match accounts documented by rights groups and local and international media. On the day he joined the protests, Thakur said a friend of his was shot dead by police while distributing food and water to protesters.
“Most of the dead were from low-income families. Some didn’t even appear to be directly involved in the protests, but were on the side of the road or the sidewalk, killed by bullets fired from helicopters.”
“After he was taken to the hospital, the bloody food and packet of biscuits in his hand and some scattered parts of the skull were lying on the road,” he recalled.
For Thakur and several other protesters The New Humanitarian spoke to, the government’s response to the largely peaceful protests – nationwide curfews, indiscriminately shooting and killing people of all ages, cutting internet access, and conducting street-level phone checks, and arrests – amounted to tyranny.
Shanto Islam said it was online footage of Abu Sayeed, a 25-year-old student activist who was killed at close range by the police on 16 July, that drove him to the streets.
Amnesty International said Sayeed’s death was the result of a “seemingly intentional and unjustifiable attack” using birdshot ammunition, which is unlawful for policing protests.
Islam, a Dhaka university student, also saw one of his friends shot dead by police. The 24-year-old said that when he took the body of his friend Tahir Zaman Priyo, whom he alleges was shot by gunfire from a helicopter outside a Dhaka medical facility, to the morgue, he was horrified by the sheer number of dead bodies.
The cold storage, he said, had run out of space.
“I have never seen so many dead bodies together,” he said. “Most of the dead were from low-income families. Some didn’t even appear to be directly involved in the protests, but were on the side of the road or the sidewalk, killed by bullets fired from helicopters.”
These deaths have also shaken his belief in the government.
Islam said he had “no concerns” about the quota reform, and was instead driven to join the movement due to the brutality of the government response, which has been compared to that of the autocratic leaders of Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Libya during the so-called Arab Spring uprisings.
“At present, the main target of the movement, the agitators, the students, the ordinary people, all of us, is to destroy this fascist regime,” Islam said, speaking in late July. “I am with the movement, hoping for the downfall of the murderous fascist government.”
Ali M. Latifi reported from Kabul, Afghanistan. Tanbirul Miraj Ripon reported from Dhaka, Bangladesh, Edited by Andrew Gully.
Initials: aml-tmr/ag
